The large black cats that people report from Britain and elsewhere in the world are sometimes said to look odd, being occasionally described as unusually gracile and less stocky than leopards (for an example in the literature see Trevor Beer’s description and illustration: Beer 1988). If this is true it makes these creatures a total mystery as no leopard-sized species matches this description. But what do you make of this peculiarly gracile large melanistic cat? Compare it with the melanistic leopard shown below…

I’ll explain what’s going on here later; I do know the answer. Yet again no time for a proper article today. But one is coming soon. It’s on a group of animals that have evolved beaks, are partially herbivorous, can spray poison, can be extremely tolerant to cold, and – in the big species – can easily bite open a human hand. If that doesn’t keep you guessing I don’t know what will.

Although the posture looks a little “crouchier” than any cheetahs I’ve seen walking. And the forelimbs look a lot shorter than the hind limbs, so that the back slopes forward. And I can’t see the head well enough to see if the skull is the right shape. Also, the neck looks a little thick. Those characteristics look less than cheetah-like.

But my best guess is that it’s a melanistic cheetah stalking some small animal on the ground — hence the “slightly crouched down” posture and the head held low. I can’t think of a better candidate.

Hm! Completely the wrong hind legs for a cheetah to my eyes, but interesting thought, it has the cheetah “pace”. (Most cats have a diagonal stride, front-left+hind-right, front-right+hind-left; cheetahs step with both right legs and both left legs together, as far as I know the only cat to walk that way.)

1) The leopards most people are familiar with are captive specimens, which are well-fed and don’t get much exercise, so are a lot fatter than their wild counterparts.

2) Young leopards or leopards at a particular point in a yearly fattening/starving cycle are thinner than adult leopards or leopards at the other side of that cycle.

3) Really, really big F. catus or small-cat hybrids?

The cat in the photo doesn’t look like a cheetah to me – all its legs, but especially its front legs, are too short and its torso too long. Plus, i’ve never even head of a melanistic cheetah. Melanistic pumas have also not been “officially” documented to exist (although they’re reported often enough that IMO they probably do exist). I’m going to guess that the cat in the photo is either a young, very thin leopard or one of the larger “small cat” species photographed with perspective to make it look bigger (we don’t know how wide that road is, for example).

Okay, I’m just throwing this out there (I can’t believe no one else mentioned it). I don’t know if this is the case, but it certainly seems to be the hypotheses you’d want to rule out first:

The top photo shows a normal-sized black house cat (a male, I’d guess); the camera angle, lack of definitive references for scale, and maybe some enforced perspective make it appear larger than it actually is.

It does look a little like a slender Burmese, but I’m
strictly an armchair adventurer, and probably couldn’t
tell a Moogie from a Smilodon at more than a hundred
feet.
Excepting the poison-spraying bits, I’d be inclined to
guess its turtles, but I’m quite willing to be surprised-
I usually am by Tet Zoo.

Tengu, I only noticed how long the tail was *after* I posted my house cat hypothesis. It does look a bit long for a house cat, but then I think there’s considerably more variability in domestic cats than in wild species, as near as I can tell.

I do think there’s nothing in that photo that unambiguously establishes that it’s an especially large cat. It might be, but you can’t tell from the photo. That might be a tree behind it, or it might be a woody shrub.

My old cat Oberon was built not unlike the cat in the photo, strong and wiry with a with a low, flat cranium. He was just an American Shorthair moggie, the son of a barn cat; his strong slender build was just the luck of the genetic draw.

My own experience with cats tells me that the perception of the length of a cat’s tail has a lot to do with how fluffy their fur is: an apparently thicker tail appears shorter. Get a cat soaking wet to find out how long its tail really is. It seems to me I’ve read that British Shorthairs have denser and shorter guard hairs than American Shorthairs, which, if true, would create the impression of a longer tail. And if the cat is feral or stray, it’s likely malnourished, which would accentuate the “gracile” appearance.

I’m still going to vote “unwittingly deceptive photo of domestic cat,” although I’d be delighted to find out otherwise.

Female leopards are much smaller and more gracile than males, and wild or free-ranging leopards are less heavy than males, and the cat in the upper photo looks a lot like a leopard. I can’t really tell whether it is spotted under the black color; the photo is too small, but it looks like it might be. So my first impression is “leopard”.

Photos like this can be deceiving. My beautiful Siamese cat, Duke, looks like this cat in every way, except that he is a sealpoint color rather than black. So maybe this is a photo of a house cat.

Melanistic golden cat is another good possibility. Maybe more likely than any of the other ones that have been suggested. I found a photo of one at this link. And here are two more, one tawny and one melanistic, at this link.

[from Darren: sorry, posting of your message got held up by the spam-filter. It doesn’t like any comments with urls in them.]

Jagaurundi? No, too large. The conformation is definitely leopard, but I’d have to say a rather short haired leopard. It would seem that leopards residing in Britain went through a genetic bottleneck where a short haired trait became fixed in the population. Along with melanism and a lengthy tail.

A certain Mr. Hing ruined this post by telling me the answer, so no guess from me about the cat.
But on the subject of the ‘coming soon’ post I go with the theme of previously suggestions, some large group that includes lots of animals like amniotes.

Yeah, after rechecking the photo that originally had me thinking it was a golden cat, I concede that the tail of the mystery beast is too long for that, despite a strong overall similarity otherwise.

I will go back and agree with Nick that it must be a melanistic mountain lion/cougar/puma, albeit a skinny one. However, I keep reading on the Internet (which is never wrong) that no instance of a black mountain lion has ever been photographed or otherwise documented. Yet Darren says he knows what the animal in the photo is. Hmm.

Other comments have mentioned the lack of evidence for melanistic pumas, yet the puma was the first felid which came to mind, fitting the overall body proportions of the cat in the first photo. But the Asiatic golden cat or jaguarundi could be other plausible identities.

The head of the mystery cat certainly doesn’t appear pantherine, so it’s unlikely to be an unusually gracile or thin leopard.

I was going to agree with the fisrt photo being of a leopard and the second a jaguar. leopards do look almost as thin as that ,but their tail is shorter.

it is not a mountain lion, because their tail is fluffier. i do not sure that it is a domestic because of the long tail. a cat with a tail like that would seem to be a snow leopard, but snow leopards are fuffy and live in the himalayas.

i think it is a underfed melanistic clouded leopard. i looked at a picture and it is veyr similar.

I was going to agree with the fisrt photo being of a leopard and the second a jaguar. leopards do look almost as thin as that ,but their tail is shorter.

it is not a mountain lion, because their tail is fluffier. i do not sure that it is a domestic because of the long tail. a cat with a tail like that would seem to be a snow leopard, but snow leopards are fuffy and live in the himalayas.

i think it is a underfed melanistic clouded leopard. i looked at a picture and it is veyr similar.

The above one, is more like the ones seen in Australia and other places, as its not exactly their favorite environment and due to obvious pressures to survive… There ain’t many, though many have seen them. Though most only once.

this is the first time that i talk about what i saw early one winter morning in seymour; 10 years ago; about 50 meter away a saw a fast walking animal walking along the fence and that gave me and indication of it’s height probably a meter tall,if not taller but the funny thing is that it wasn’t a cat looking it was more like a cross between a fox and who knows what!!.Brown in color, pointy face, like a fox but a huge head, not in proportion to its body tall and fast walking and the back of the animal where the tail was looked a bit deformed, sort of like a hyena’s back but not quite as pronounce, it kind of freak me out how fast it was moving, i know what i saw and i wasn’t dreaming, surely there must be someone out there who has also seen this animal!

You can even see the cheek marking like so http://www.felidae.org/PHOTO_GALLERY/bbccrop.jpg (facial markings are often but not always present in melanistic golden cats, and appear in varying degrees in both golden and bay cats). I bet if someone IDed the plants in the background, the species range would match.

the cat on the bottom is shorter and looks a lot bulkier. The one on the top is leaner and longer it looks like a mix of two different wild large animals. Some things change over a long period of time and I think this could be something like that, two totally different creatures mating together, or something that has been around for a while. Not seen enough to make it something dangerous or domestic from just the human eye passing buy and thinking its just a cat. There is somethings that haven’t been seen or discovered yet and they might hole the mysteries of what has been happening on earth for as long as it has been alive.